Council Votes to Demolish the Lister Block

Councillors voted Wednesday night to demolish the building to make way for a $30-million office building with a replicated facade.

The majority of councillors supported the demolition request by the Labourers’ International Union of North America and partner Hi-Rise Group.

The wild card, however, remains in the province’s hands.

Councillor Brian McHattie has asked the government to intervene and designate the Lister as a provincial heritage building. The Minister of Culture plans to weigh in now that council has voted. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Klein threatens to abandon equalization

Alberta would pull out of the federal equalization program rather than see the other provinces benefit from its oil and natural gas resources, Premier Ralph Klein said.

October 14, 2005

Klein said on Wednesday he’s ready to fight with the eastern provinces to keep Alberta’s resource revenues out of the equalization program, which sends federal money to poorer provinces so they can provide services such as health care.

At a meeting next month, other premiers are expected to suggest that Alberta’s oil revenues can be included in the calculations that determine how much cash each province gets from Ottawa.

“This is political showdown,” Klein said. “This is also a constitutional issue. Alberta has control and authorization and authority over its resources.”

And he said he’s willing to walk away from the program altogether.

But University of Alberta political scientist Steve Patten suggests Klein can’t really do that, and his bluster won’t go far among the premiers, even if it works to whip up long-standing anti-eastern sentiment among Albertans.

Equalization payments come from federal government revenues, such as federal income tax, not from Alberta’s bank accounts, Patten said. Pulling out, he said, would have no effect on the program. (Source: CBC News)

Ethanol: Viable fuel option or green pipe dream?

As rising oil prices have motorists paying a premium at the gas pumps, consumers are beginning to wonder when it will all end, and where the solution lies.The answer could be contained in ethanol, a bio-fuel that the government is increasingly touting as the renewable resource of choice that will also help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The provinces and the federal government recently joined forces and announced a plan to boost the amount of ethanol mixed into all Canadian gasoline to five per cent by 2010, up from the current one per cent requirement.

Following a meeting in Regina, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose praised the initiative as an important milestone for Canada, and said the provinces showed a “successful will to move forward” on ethanol benchmarks for gasoline.

“It’s an ambitious target but we’ve done a lot of work in the last few months with the energy minister and agriculture minister, and feel very strongly it’s a reachable target,” Ambrose told CTV’s Canada AM.

“It’s time we think Canada start to play in the new economy, and we give opportunities for our agricultural sector and for Canadians to start participating in this kind of environmental challenge.” Source (CTV News)

PM given ultimatum

Opposition party leaders warned recently that they are willing to bring down Stephen Harper’s minority government if it does not change its course — particularly on the Tory promise to provide a child-care subsidy to parents — in the next two weeks.

In separate meetings with the Prime Minister, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham and the Bloc Quebecois’ Gilles Duceppe reminded the Conservative leader his party is outnumbered in the House of Commons and urged him to compromise on the government agenda as he drafts his Throne Speech.

The speech, which will be delivered by Governor-General Michaelle Jean on April 4, sets out the agenda for the coming parliamentary session and will be passed or defeated in a confidence vote that could spark another election.

Mr. Graham insisted the Liberals are willing to face the consequences of a confidence vote even though they won’t have a new leader until December and are still struggling with the fallout of the party’s defeat in January.

He laid out his party’s well-known concerns about the Tory agenda, including the fate of a $5-billion deal — signed by the Liberals last year — to improve living conditions for aboriginals, opposition to a cut to the Goods and Services Tax and Mr. Harper’s promise to pull out of child-care agreements that were also signed by the previous Liberal government (Source: National Post)

Dawn of a new era?

Quebec and Ottawa are close to an agreement that will allow the province to have a voice at UNESCO, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday in emphasizing his government’s “open federalism” policy toward Quebec.

For the first time in 22 years, a Canadian prime minister met with a Quebec premier at the National Assembly in what Premier Jean Charest dubbed the beginning of a new era of federal-provincial co-operation. It was the third face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Mr. Harper’s government was sworn in.

An agreement on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization carries great symbolic meaning for the Quebec government in its bid to prove that Mr. Harper’s proposals for renewing federalism can work in the province’s favour.

“Mr. Charest and I have agreed to task our respective ministers to move forward on ensuring that Quebec’s voice be heard at UNESCO,” Mr. Harper said at the conclusion of a two-hour meeting. “There are a couple of proposals on the table. And as I say, we are flexible and very optimistic we are going to reach a solution sooner rather than later.” (Source: Globe & Mail)